Posts Tagged 'healthy living'

So I do my hill repeats on this street which has a nice wide sidewalk. It happens to be next to a cemetery, and that irony is not lost on me. Anyway, I run up the hill hard, and walk down it, recover, run up again…way too many times. The other night, I’m at the bottom and I see this kind of disheveled looking guy on the the other side of the street at the top of the hill coming down, sort of swaying, while holding a 24 pack of Natty Light. I shrug and hope he doesn’t steal my Gatorade and start running up the hill. I notice him cross to my side of the street in my peripheral vision. I get to the top of the hill, panting, turn around and he’s GONE. Now if you had seen him walking–he was slow and not too steady on his pins– you’d understand my dismay. Where the hell was he? I was totally freaked out. Then I see his case of Natty Light next to a tree, which is next to the sidewalk, but no guy. A zillion things run through my head and I’m pondering at least crossing the street, but then I saw he had plopped down on the grass, pulled out a smoke, opened a beer….all he needed was a foam finger. I hope he enjoyed spectating. I think I need to find a new hill.

Maybe a year ago, I thought I might want to start blogging again. I was free once again to talk about (nearly) every aspect of my life, and I was making some wholesale changes to my lifestyle. Plus! So many of my friends were having success writing healthy living blogs. People were actually reading them. They were getting FREE STUFF for Pete’s Sake. So I created a blog and tried to jump on that bandwagon.

But I realized pretty quickly that I’m not all about healthy living. I’m about a lot of different things, as we all are. But I, personally, wasn’t very good at thinking of posts about something as limited as I had originally created that blog to be. I also felt like I couldn’t be a proper healthy living blogger as I had fallen off the running a bit, and was just generally living a normal life with ups and downs and twists and turns.

But becoming a healthier person is still a goal in my life, and it is one that I will occasionally be posting about here.

So as an overview, here’s where I am:

In January, I decided that I wanted to try running again, and I wanted to start from the beginning with a 5K plan. This time I went to my friend and (then) newly minted running coach, Krissie of Committed Coaching, and she created a plan with me in mind. Knowing the race I wanted to run wasn’t until May, she built me up nice and slow. It went really well, lots of little victories building up to a PR (personal record/personal best) for that race in May.

In March, while doing that training, I discovered Fitbit products. I started with a Zip and I now have a Flex. These little gadgets are so much more than pedometers. I credit the Fitbit and their app/website, as well as the running, with the 22 pounds I have lost since March. There are other products like the Fitbit, and I’m not doing a proper product review here. But I will say that I tell people that using it daily is like starring in my own video game. 10,000 steps a day is the goal, how are you going to get there? Food is fuel. More steps means you need more fuel. And you see, I’m overweight in the first place because I really like to eat. I step more, I get to eat more. It gives me real time imput, it remembers my typical activity any given day of the week and it balances my calorie goal to how much activity I normally get on, say, my average Tuesday. But it also adjusts if it appears I am not going to be as active that day.

I also had been using My Fitness Pal to track my food. And brilliantly, the Fitbit syncs seamlessly with My Fitness Pal, so I can keep tracking my food on MFP and it talks to Fitbit behind my back and helps it to adjust my calorie goals.

I am now working on a speed plan to get a bit faster. Then I will begin training to run a 10K in February, which I think I will post about later. But again, I will be working with Coach Krissie and keeping up with the other things that I do. I can’t say enough about how I can feel her encouragement, her wisdom, and yes, her love keeping me going. I want to make her proud of me, but I know I do that just by trying my hardest, too.

So a typical week for me looks like: Monday, a run. Tuesday, line dancing. Wednesday, a run. Thursday Rest Day. Friday-strength training. Saturday, a run. Sunday-volunteering at Last Chance Ranch, which generally nets me about 2 miles of steps, plus some sort of walk or activity with my dog. I’m looking to add more strength training in there, but I’m not beating myself up about it.

And that, right there, my friends, is the key. I HAVE STOPPED BEATING MYSELF UP ABOUT IT. I do the best I can. I enjoy what I’m doing. I wouldn’t exactly say right now that I love running. But I would say that I want to conquer running, and I enjoy the mental struggle of pushing through a run and the victorious feeling when it is over.

I have many small weight loss goals. I’ve got running goals. I’ve got clothing size goals. I’ve missed some and kept going anyway. Because the journey of reaching the goals doesn’t feel like this huge overriding struggle towards this long-awaited ending anymore. It just feels like I’m living my life. It feels like the way I’m living and enjoying my whole life is allowing me to lose some weight, not like I’m living my life trying just to be skinny like everyone else.

I’m not going to promise you that I won’t fall off the fitness wagon, but it seems less likely this time. I promise you that it won’t happen today. And probably not tomorrow. I don’t always track my food. Sometimes I eat a large portion of crab fries. Sometimes I feel like I run like the wind. Sometimes I’ve got lead weights instead of running shoes. But I keep going.

This time, I want to keep going.

Lori

A blog about my life and other stuff.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.